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Five Democratic members of Congress traveled to Louisiana on Tuesday to meet with two students in immigration detention whom the Trump administration is seeking to deport over their political speech.
Rep. Troy Carter of Louisiana, Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and three Massachusetts Democrats — Sen. Edward J. Markey and Reps. Ayanna Pressley and Jim McGovern — visited Mahmoud Khalil, a legal U.S. permanent resident and Palestinian student activist, and Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student, at the immigration detention facilities where they are being held.
“The Trump administration just feels it has the right to take people from across our country and put them into facilities like this,” Markey told reporters outside the facility in Basile, where Öztürk has been detained since her arrest in March. “It’s a national disgrace.”
Civil rights advocates say that Khalil’s and Öztürk’s detentions are blatant violations of their right to free speech. Khalil was a prominent leader in the Columbia University protests against Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip, and Öztürk, a Turkish national, wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper criticizing her school’s response to the war.
The administration has accused both Khalil and Öztürk of supporting Hamas without providing direct evidence for its claims. Neither of them has been charged with or convicted of any crime.
The Democrats’ visit this week is part of a larger effort to highlight the plight of those targeted by the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Several Democratic lawmakers have also traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father with protected status whom the administration admitted to having mistakenly deported last month.
In an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow later Tuesday, Carter said that detainees in one of the facilities they visited said the place was kept very cold and that some women told him that feminine hygiene products, as well as toilet paper, have not been provided.
“While they appear to be healthy, there are a lot of challenges at these facilities that require immediate attention,” Carter said.
Öztürk has spoken of the “unsanitary, unsafe, and inhumane” conditions in the facility in Basile. She said that she has suffered multiple untreated asthma attacks while there, and that her hijab was taken off without her consent.
Khalil’s wife said Monday that he missed the birth of his first child when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement denied his request for temporary release.